Thank you for continuing to provide this service @len! It has worked well for my family.
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Thank you for continuing this service! I am grateful for it and the work that you and your team do!
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We’ll consider the dessert parties. We’ve got a few requests for them.
We’re not going to be able to do exact-time searches for reservations. The reason is that it makes the back-office searches inefficient.
We combine as many “like” requests as possible into a single search, to keep things efficient. The simplest example is when we’ve got 2 different families with the same request for Be Our Guest at 8 AM on July 5, 2016. We only need 1 search to solve those 2 requests. That’s a 50% reduction in searches.
You can also combine all “Magic Kingdom at 8 AM on July 5” requests into a single search, in case there’s anyone who wants Crystal Palace or Cinderella’s Royal Table. In fact, you could do all of WDW’s 8 AM breakfasts on July 5 with 1 search.
By knowing how Disney’s website handles searches, we’re able to get a 50-70% reduction in the number of searches we have to make. That’s one of the reasons we’re able to do this for free. (The other, frankly, is a labor rate in Southeast Asia of around $1/hour.)
I hope that’s understandable. Thanks for your support with this.
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Haha yes! I feel that this should really be a service used for individual people planning for themselves, not so much for TAs. They are getting a commission after all for doing the work/reasearch, aren’t they?
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@len I really am grateful for the res finder service as well as all of the help TP provides, makes planning so much easier! Thanks for all your hard work!
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@len Thanks to you and the TP team for all you do! I’ve been a TP reader since way back–too long ago to mention!
I feel like an idiot because the reservation finder has found reservations for me, and I didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t click on the link. Instead I tried to use MDE to make the reservation for the time that the reservation finder found (say that three times fast!).
Now I know better and will stop wasting the time and energy of all the nice reservation finder finders and will click if they ever find me another one!
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Ah, it’s okay. Some of that is built into the model. It’s really a handful of people for whom we need to have limits. Good luck with your searches!
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I really appreciate this service. It helped us find a BOG reservation for our trip a couple of weeks ago. I’m sorry that a few have taken advantage of your site. I value so many of the services that TP offers, and happily renew my subscription each year. Have you thought about making this service available only to those with a TP subscription?
Just a few thoughts from a travel agent.
My understanding of the Touring Plans usage was that you could have a personal and a business account but that you could not use your personal account to conduct searches (or use crowd calendars) for clients. I gift each client with a subscription to your site through your TA program. Therefore I don’t create a backlog of requests, as each individual family has to use their own account. If people are violating these terms of service I would hope that they get cut off. They probably don’t play fair in other areas of Disney booking either.
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Hmm but I have 3…but technically 1.
I want Cinderella royal table I am traveling with extended family which makes us 9. I have request for 9 but also if worst came to worst I was willing for us to be broken down as 5 and 4…how would this be handled?
I am a TA and had no idea this was offered…I actually do my own work. It makes the TA’s that DO their own work look bad, by taking advantage of your service. I’m sure those who use it to do their own planning find it very valuable!
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Are you actually using live Southeast Asians at around $1/hour to run all these searches?
A request for 9 would count as 1. A request for 5 and 4 would count as 2.
Wasn’t kidding. You’ll see instances where no searches get run one day because there’s a local holiday we were not aware of.
But you’re kidding about the labor rate right?
Thanks for the reply. I wasn’t aware that there were live people behind the searches. Interesting! I’ve heard a lot about hiring overseas virtual assistants lately though.
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It’s not exactly $1/hour, but it is exceptionally low.
Just wanted to pop in here and say thank you for implementing this. I’m new to TP and paid for a subscription last week in hopes of securing a California Grill Dinner prior to fireworks on our honeymoon trip. One week later, I have reserved a 7:10 ADR and could not be happier with this service. Thanks again! 
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Have a magical honeymoon!